Again, Again!

Again, again, even if we know the countryside of love,
And the tiny churchyard with its names mourning,
And the chasm, more and more silent, terrifying, into which the others
Dropped: we walk out together anyway
Beneath the ancient trees, we lie down again,
Again, among the flowers, and face the sky.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew (VII)

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolutions.

Treat all things as if they were loaned to you without any ownership - whether body or soul, sense or strength, external goods or honors, house or hall . . . everything.

I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on.

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to,everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil,can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe.

Some people think of the glass as half full. Some people think of the glass as half empty. I think of the glass as too big.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.